Strategy
by Left Hook
Summary: In the wake of the breach collapse, Mako and Raleigh heal...and desperation makes an enemy more dangerous.
1. Card Shark

On the ride back to the Shatterdome, it occurs to her that the new world means that someday she might eat kuro maguro again, the bluefin tuna that was her mother's favorite. After the sixth or so kaiju died off the coast, its toxic brains and blood staining the ocean, they declared maguro wasn't safe to eat anymore. Her mother was dead by then. It would be years, probably, before the sea cleared itself and the kuro maguro reclaimed its old hunting grounds, but now that it would have a chance to recover—

The side of Mako's head hits the window harder than she intends. Raleigh, sitting next to her wrapped in his own giant blanket, raises his head. "You okay?" he says quietly.

The choppy blue waters rush furiously beneath them. The kaiju were gone, maybe forever, and her sensei was definitely gone forever, swallowed by the same nuclear holocaust that had been nibbling at his bones for years.

And she is thinking about tuna. Mako chokes on an ugly, painful laugh.

Raleigh leans over and bumps his shoulder against hers. After a moment, she leans back, and they stay like that until the Shatterdome rears up in the window.

* * *

The morning after, Raleigh wakes up unbelievably sore all over. He's barely dragged himself out of bed when the door pings and one of the lower officers, in full military dress, tells him he's expected to report to medical in thirty minutes. At least they let him sleep in, he thinks, rubbing his eyes, and then he looks in the mirror and sees a guy that helped save the world and he finds he feels like smiling at himself for the first time in a long, long time.

The doctors spend a lot of time poking and prodding and taking blood from the guy that saved the world. He and Mako had both gotten a small dose of radiation, they tell him. Less than a gray, exposure spread over their entire bodies instead of concentrated on one area, so it isn't serious. The doctors didn't expect any long-term consequences. They don't seem to have picked up anything from the other dimension, either, although nobody really knows how to look for that, exactly.

When that's done there's an equally thorough debriefing. He spends the better part of a day and a half locked in the airless room going over and over the battle in excruciating detail. They had no data from the moment he and Mako disappeared into the other dimension and they want to know everything he can remember and a bunch of things he can't.

When they finally let him go he goes to change out of his uniform and lingers with the door open, hoping to see the person across the hall, and finally Mako comes down the corridor. He's surprised at how much he missed her face after only two days. She looks happy to see him too, and they go down to mess together.

They debriefed her too, but since she was unconscious for the better part of the trip to the other world hers ended a day earlier.

"So you haven't seen anything on the news yet?" she asks.

"No."

"It's..." she hesitates. "Crazy. I think some people have not stopped partying since the battle. Our faces are everywhere. On the TV, and on signs, and T-shirts."

"You get used to it," Raleigh says. "I used to keep a collection of stuff with me and Yancy's face on it. I think the weirdest thing we found was Raleigh-and-Yancy saltshakers."

Mako pushes rice back and forth on her plate. She looks worn, drained from battle and haunted by loss. "It is very strange."

"They'll forget about us in a few months," he says. "There are some good parts, anyway. You have to pay for a lot fewer meals in restaurants, for one."

One corner of her mouth tugs up, which is enough for him. "You ready for all these interviews tomorrow?" he asks.

She nods. "I am glad you're going with me, though," she says quietly, looking at him sideways through her blue-and-black bangs.

"Yep, I'm a pro at all this," he says, grinning at her. "Just follow my lead."

* * *

Everyone from Mumbai Live to Chile 77 wants them to repeat the story over and over and pose for photos and pry into their relationship, so it's a relief when they finally break for lunch.

"Do you miss her?" Mako asks, finding Raleigh sitting in the scaffolding that used to support the Gipsy Danger.

There's been talk about recreating Gipsy, a monument to the end of the war. Mako never really thought about it that way before, being a player in events that spawned monuments. She'd wanted to kill kaiju for so long that it feels like a stone pillar of her identity, maybe the stone pillar, but being part of the team that ended them—she wouldn't have dared to hope it.

"Yeah," Raleigh says. She folds herself down next to him and they sit in thoughtful silence, watching the engineers repairing the Typhoon, the only jaeger in a big enough piece to salvage. They still want to keep a jaeger functioning. Just in case. She thinks about the _just in case_ a lot.

"But I'm glad she's gone, too," Raleigh says after a while. "One thing the Drift teaches you is that living in old memories isn't worth much, and she was all of them, for me."

"She went to an honorable end," Mako says.

"Very honorable." When she looks over, Raleigh is grinning affectionately at her and she looks down, away. "Wouldn't have it any other way."

She focuses on a figure far beneath them: Herc, walking across the bay as people move respectfully out of his way. He doesn't seem to notice them. He moves through the dome like a ghost. Mako thinks he probably isn't long for this world unless he finds something to live for other than keeping his son's dog alive. She's seen soldiers who walked like that. They died, often on routine missions. She hopes that Herc finds whatever it is he needs.

Too soon it's time to face the cameras again.

* * *

They are coming back from the third long day of interviews long into the night. Base is quiet, almost everyone in their bunks except for the sentries still manning the breach detectors.

"Hey, Becket," says one of the engineers as they pass in the hallway. He recognizes the face, one of the techs who worked on Gipsy.

"Hey, Ocampo," he says.

"Got a poker game going in the mess hall. Wanna join?"

"Sure," he says, and raises an eyebrow at Mako. "You in? Do you play?"

Mako looks surprised for a moment, and then she grins, the first real smile he's seen out of her all day, and maybe Raleigh's imagining things but he thinks there's a whiff of shark about it. "Yes."

Mess is deserted this late at night except for a half-dozen other engineers gathered around a worn-edged deck of cards and a bottle of rum. He and Mako sit down across from each other and there's a momentary hush.

"What's the buy-in?" Raleigh says into the silence, cracking his knuckles. It's all part of the show.

"We usually start at fifty and go from there," says a woman with "Liu" stamped on her motor oil-spattered jumpsuit.

"My kind of game," Raleigh says.

Liu deals while Ocampo pours them all a long generous slosh of rum. Raleigh's picked up his cards before he realizes that everyone else hasn't touched theirs but reached for the rum instead. He hastily puts his cards down and joins in.

"To the apocalypse being canceled," one says, and three or four of the others pound the table a little and murmur in agreement, clinking their glasses together. The rum has a searing, medicinal afterburn. It feels good.

They settle down to the business of cards. Raleigh's got a pair of threes and not much else. He throws everything else away and picks up nothing.

When he looks over at Mako, she's examining the cards in her hand with nothing, _nothing_ on her face. He blinks. She's not normally easy to read—especially when you didn't know her well or hadn't drifted with her—but he's pretty sure he has never seen quite such a completely blank face before. Long Alaska nights mean he's played a _lot_ of poker, too.

"Bets?" says Liu.

Raleigh doesn't even try to bluff it out. He tosses his cards in and watches Mako openly as the others put their bets in.

"Raise," she says, when it comes to her, and she adds a few more coins. He watches the other engineers try to read her, then shrugs when they look at him.

Mako stays in when the others raise, too, and soon it's just her, Ocampo, and another engineer from C-deck in the final round. "Things looking good for the hero?" Ocampo asks her cheerfully, and she smiles at him in an astoundingly informationless way—all teeth and courteousness.

"Okay, lay 'em out, folks," Liu says, and Mako lays out a full house.

Raleigh stamps on the floor and whoops. No one's got her beat. For a moment he's the only one to cheer, then Ocampo's face widens in a grin and he raises a fist to bump. Mako raises hers back, smiling a little shyly. "Nice one, hero!" he says, and pushes the pot over.

"Must be first draw luck, eh?" Ocampo teases. "You guys sure are lucky sons a guns, let me tell you. We were all listening in on your transmission, you know. They piped it in to the whole bay."

"You ain't wrong," Raleigh says.

"Next round's to luck, then!" Ocampo says, reaching for the rum bottle. "To luck!" they all echo.

Raleigh's luck does come around a little on the second round. He picks up a pair of jacks on the first round and then another one on the next. Liu's got a straight, but it's okay; the rum is starting to kick in and so is the cameraderie. He'd missed this, drinking and trading war stories with people who'd saved his life and whose lives he'd saved.

"Hey now," says another of the guys on the third round, eyeing Mako's steadily growing pile and Raleigh's decent one. "Is this fair? Seeing as how you two basically have the same mind now, right?"

Raleigh and Mako share a look. "That's not really how it works," Raleigh says, tapping the ends of his cards on the table to align them. "You can't remember everything you see in the meld. You just wind up with this kind of...familiarity, I guess."

"So you don't have...I mean...her entire memory downloaded into yours?" Ocampo asks, leaning forward, his biceps straining against the ripped-off sleeves of his tech suit.

"Nah, nah," Raleigh says. "I have solid memories of only like, ten percent of my own life...where do you think you'd have storage for every moment of a whole other person's life?"

"Huh," Liu says. "Same for you, then?" she asks Mako.

Mako pauses. "He stole a bunch of candy from his day care center when he was eight," she says.

Raleigh spits out a mouthful of rum, and the table erupts in laughter. "You saw that?" Raleigh says, wiping his mouth.

Mako smiles. "He shared it with the other kids, though," she tells the table. "Raleigh's right. I don't have all his memories, but sometimes he will do or say something that sounds familiar, and one of them pops up. It's like...a dream that you don't remember until you see something in real life that reminds you."

"I got into lot of trouble as a kid," Raleigh admits. "I did a lot of things I'm not proud of."

Mako shrugs, one-shouldered, sliding long fingers up and down the edge of her cards. "You were a good kid," she says.

Raleigh grins. "So good that I won't even tell them what I saw in your mind," he teases, and her ears turn a little pink.

"We betting or what?" the C-deck engineer demands, and they pick the round back up.

Talk turns around to the new world and what it'll be like. "It won't be the same," says C-deck, who is old enough to have spent most of his life before kaiju. "Even if they never come back."

"I just can't wait to get off rations," Ocampo sighs. "We used to eat chicken all the time when I was a kid. Like, twice a week at least."

"Chicken?" C-deck scoffs. "Beef, kid! _Beef_. I used to have steak whenever I felt like it. Steak for breakfast. Steak for dinner."

"Get off it, old man," says one of the younger techs. He's probably even younger than Mako; he's never known that old world. There's only a few places where they raise cows anymore. They're too inefficient, eat too much and give too little. Raleigh remembers eating hamburgers as a kid but by the time he was in high school they were already getting expensive as the population grew and the carbon threw the growing cycles out of whack.

"I can't wait to get back home," says Smith, a stocky guy with wiry red hair and a New Zealand accent, softer and deeper in the valleys than Australian. "People are already starting to talk about going back. My pop says they've already filed claim for their old spot in Wellington. He was heartsick when they left."

Almost the entire population of New Zealand had fled to Australia in the middle years of the kaiju war. Raleigh remembered that well. That was before they'd gotten really good at making jaegers, in the dark years when no one talked about the very real possibility that the kaiju would win, and New Zealand just didn't have the military to keep its borders secure anymore.

"What about you, Liu?" Ocampo nudges her. "What are you waiting to get back?"

She stares at the cards. "My brother," she says softly.

Raleigh raises an eyebrow.

"Her brother's a 'ju-head," C-deck says, a bit louder than necessary. "Off somewhere mourning the kaiju while we're all celebrating getting our lives back. You think they're gonna pull their heads outta their asses now? I ain't holding my breath for that."

Raleigh clears his throat. "Hey, how about some respect, huh?"

"For them?" C-deck snorts. "For the goddamned _Church of the Breach-borne Angels_? The people that celebrated when those fucking monsters came out of the breach and killed people?"

"Hey," Ocampo says, serenity against the other man's rising indignation. "Liu ain't a ju-head, that much's obvious, and family's family, even if they wanna worship kaiju."

Liu's lips have been steadily tightening the entire time. She pushes back her chair. "I'm going to take a leak," she says.

They watch her go, her back very straight.

"Whatever," C-deck says. "She's not gonna get her brother back. Them ju-heads are doubling down. I saw them on the news, holding prayer services to forgive us all our sins for killing the kaiju. That's something you don't come back from."

"Doesn't mean you have to rub it in her face," Ocampo says. "Let her hope, yeah?"

"What's the point of pretending?" C-deck says, but they seem to all listen to Ocampo, so he throws his head back and drains his glass.

Raleigh drinks more rum, too, and loses a bunch of his pile. Ocampo proposes a toast to the new world. C-deck follows it up with one to the old. When it's Raleigh's turn he toasts the engineers; without them he and Mako would be sitting on top of a pile of rusty bolts. He gets a round of cheers and pounds on the back and an extra shot poured just for him, which he downs obligingly. Sometime during this Mako starts hiding smiles when she looks at him. She's pretty great, Mako.

"What?" Mako says, and he possibly just said that out loud. "Whatever, it's true," he says.

"You are drunk," she says.

"I'm excellent," he corrects her.

"You are _really_ drunk," she says, and he laughs.

They pour out the last of the second bottle of rum for a final round. "Heroes! What are we toasting to?" Ocampo shouts. He's gotten progressively louder with each round.

"To Marshal Pentecost," Mako says.

The chatter hushes down, and their glasses hover in midair. "To the marshal," they echo solemnly, and drink in respectful silence.

* * *

Raleigh blinks and he's walking down the hallway. Well, walking is maybe an overstatement; his legs keep going places he didn't mean for them to go, and he's leaning really heavily on someone whose arm is under his shoulder.

"Oh, it's you," he says.

Mako rolls her eyes. "Of course it's me," she says. "Baka."

"Hey," he says. "''M not an idiot."

"Only someone who didn't see you try to wrestle Ocampo would agree with that," Mako says, hefting his weight a little higher.

"He challenged me," Raleigh objects. His hand brushes against the side of her jumpsuit. There is a bulge that he doesn't expect and he pats it again.

_"RALEIGH,"_ Mako says dangerously.

"Is this your winnings?" he asks.

"Yes."

"You're a fucking card shark, you know that?" he says, looking closer at her. He's pretty sure her cheeks are a little pink. "Mako the card shark. You know why that's great? You're a Mako shark!"

"You stopped making sense a long time ago," Mako informs him.

"It's a thing!" he insists as she pulls his arm higher across her shoulders again. "Mako sharks!"

"I do not know what you are talking about," she huffs.

"You, you're amazing at cards," he says.

Unexpectedly, and delightfully, she giggles. Mako Mori is giggling. Raleigh remembers that she's had a fair amount of rum too.

"Where'd you learn to play like that?" he says.

The smile slides off her face and he is instantly sorry. He knows the answer even before she says softly, "Stacker-sensei enjoyed poker very much."

"Sorry," he breathes.

There's a silence.

"It's okay," Mako says. "Everyone tries not to mention him around me, but I...do not want to pretend he didn't exist."

Oh shit. Raleigh is way too drunk to be having this conversation. He takes a moment to hope fervently that he doesn't fuck it up. "You can always talk about him with me."

"I know," Mako says, and then she doesn't say anything. Raleigh shuts his trap. After a minute, she says, "I'm pretty good at chess, too."

Pretty good probably means she was nationally ranked in chess, he thinks.

"That game I learned before Stacker-sensei," she says. "I was very good at it as a child. But Stacker-sensei said chess was good but it does not teach you everything. We played a lot of card games. Poker was my favorite."

A blurry image of Stacker, looking younger in military-issue gray T-shirt and dog tags, dropping his cards across a metal table and laughing openly, swims into Raleigh's mind. There is a flush of warm pride glowing within the memory. "He sure loved you," he says.

They stop for a moment in the hallway, swaying a little, and then she keys open a door, flooding both of them with light.

"It's strange," she says, "to have someone else's perspective on my own memories."

"Oh-sorry," Raleigh says, again. He focuses his eyes and realizes they're at the door to her quarters, not his. She shoulders him inside and dumps him fairly unceremoniously on the couch. Then, to his surprise, she sinks down on the arm of the couch beside him.

"I hope you are right," she says, displaying a rare moment of uncertainty. "I hope I did not...disappoint him."

"I know you didn't," he says.

She stays there a moment, very still, and Raleigh follows the lines of her profile, those impossible cheekbones outlined against the overhead fluorescents.

"Wish I could have seen you play," he says after a minute, tipping his head back against the couch. "I'm terrible at chess."

"That does not surprise me," she says, and he's not even insulted. "Do you want me to teach you?"

He can't stop a big stupid grin spreading across his face. "Yes."

"Okay, then," she says, getting up and clapping him on the shoulder. "You're going to learn from the best."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," he says, still grinning at her as she moves across the room to her bunk. "Um—is it okay if—'m I gonna stay here tonight?"

"If you want to," Mako says.

Raleigh sort of flops sideways on the couch—he's sobering up a little bit but he's still got what feels like a handle of rum sloshing around inside him—and curls up on his side. The couch smells a little bit like her.

"So you'll teach me tomorrow?" he says.

"Go to sleep, flyboy," she says, warmth and something else in her voice.

"G'night, Mako," he says.

* * *

A/N: Well folks, I went in to this movie super excited for a male-female friendship movie. Like Watson and Sherlock in Elementary! Then they had so much damn chemistry the whole thing went up in flames halfway through. Hope you enjoy! I hope there aren't too many tropes; I was afraid if I read too much of the amazing stuff that's already out there I'd get too discouraged to write. Next chap: Motorcycles & buns. Heh XD


	2. The Lay of the Land

In a couple weeks, exactly a month after they destroyed the breach, they're going to have a ceremony to break ground on a memorial to the Kaiju Wars. It's being built where the last kaiju died on land, not far from the ocean in Hong Kong. She and Raleigh are supposed to be guests of honor, along with Herc, accepting the honor for his dead son. Stacker doesn't have any living relatives, at least not close ones, so Mako will accept in his honor as well.

"What're you doing with your bonus?" Raleigh pops his head into her quarters after they've gotten back from another training session with the transition engineers.

They got a little pay bonus for saving the world. It's not much, because their whole operation is funded by begging from other nations' depleted defense budgets, but Mako appreciates the gesture.

"I don't know yet," she says.

Raleigh grins. "Want to see what I did with mine?"

* * *

"Oh," she says, staring at the sleek chrome lines of Raleigh's new motorcycle. It's small and compact, built for speed, with yellow and black trim. There are yellow lights along the wheels like was fashionable a decade or so ago.

He beams, running a hand over the black seat. "Picked her up for a song from a friend of Ocampo's in the city. What do you think?"

Mako lays her hand on the handlebars and feels a thrill run up her arm. "It feels like freedom," she says, and looks up to see a weird look on Raleigh's face, blond eyebrows slanted in surprise.

"What?"

"That's—" He shakes his head. "You want a ride?"

"We're not supposed to go off base, flyboy," she says, reaching over to pick up the smaller helmet dangling off one handlebar.

Raleigh's smile chases away the weird look as she snaps the helmet underneath her bangs, and he swings one leg over the seat to grab his own helmet. She settles in behind him and slips her arms around his waist. He is a solid wall of warmth in front of her, and she can practically feel the excitement rolling off him.

"Ready?" he asks, and when she says she is, he kicks the stand back and they're off.

She tightens her arms around him as they speed out of the lower bay, leaving a bored-looking guard in their wake.

Mako hasn't been out on the streets since the breach. It's a gorgeous day, sky blue and clear, just cool enough that the flightsuits they're both wearing aren't oppressive. The bridge back to Hong Kong stretches out before them and the water glitters below.

Mako leans forward, watching the pillars of the bridge whip by, and she pushes her face back against the insistent wind and it feels so good that she laughs out loud into the wind.

Raleigh throws a look, eyebrow raised, over his shoulder. It's too loud to talk, and she's too happy, so she just shrugs against him.

They speed over the bridge and Hong Kong rises in front of them. Mako automatically searches for the long scar of destruction that she wrought when she was 250 feet tall a week earlier and finds it, twin trails of dark rubble leading out from the ocean.

No one's told her the death toll from that attack.

Anonymous beneath their helmets they are free to see their own faces everywhere, flashing on the occasional news broadcast, in flyers and signs abandoned on the sidewalks and propped in windows. It is supremely bizarre.

And the mood—she doesn't realize what it is right away, but the mood in Hong Kong is different. The signs are all around them: shopkeepers sweeping and putting in new glass and displays in the storefronts. A road crew carefully repairing a crack in the road. Lines of battered cabs streaming into the city around them, full loads of passengers from the airport. People returning to the coastal cities.

"Oh, turn here," she says, pointing left as she recognizes the street.

Raleigh obliges and follows her directions until they pull up in front of a familiar red canopy with a big new crack in the plate glass window.

"Can I buy you some of the best pork buns in Hong Kong?" she asks, as Raleigh slows the bike down.

"Sure," Raleigh says, and she hops off and goes in, pulling off her helmet as Raleigh parks the bike, wondering how many she could eat—she's suddenly starving—and whether they should get just pork or red beans too.

She's drawn back abruptly into reality when the elderly woman behind the counter squawks when she sees Mako. "Mori Mako!" she says, and then a stream of Cantonese. Mako has a moment of utter confusion—she was a regular here but grandma has never called her by name before—and then Raleigh appears at her shoulder, pulling off his own helmet, and the old woman's eyes bug out and she looks like she's about to keel over.

It clicks then. "Um," Mako says. "Maybe we should—"

"Becket Raleigh!" grandma says faintly, and Raleigh grins that big goofy smile of his and says, "Well hello! Mako, I think we have a fan, eh?"

He strides forward, handsome and tall in his gray military-issue flight suit, and reaches out to shake grandma's hand. "Pleased to meet you."

An old man in a grease-spotted apron who is clearly grandma's husband comes out of the kitchen and stops dead, staring, and behind him a young girl peeks out too. "My colleague here says you make the best buns in the city," Raleigh is saying to grandma, shaking her wrinkled hand gravely.

Mako stays frozen, torn between wanting to flee and amusement at how easily Raleigh slips into the shoes of the hero role.

"Well come on," Raleigh says over his shoulder to her, and she steps forward to shake grandma's hand over the steaming trays of buns, smiling awkwardly. The old lady is still mostly speechless, but she begins to regain her voice as Raleigh moves over to greet her husband. "I tell everyone that Mori Mako is my customer, but they laugh," she says.

Mako fights a silly laugh at the improbability of the situation herself. "It's true," she says a bit lamely, "yours are the best."

"You sign?" the woman says eagerly, pointing at the poster in the window of Mako and Raleigh from the cover of one of the dailies.

"Sure," Mako says, and grandma practically leaps across the little shop to get it. Raleigh has coaxed out the young girl, who is translating for her grandpa as he fires questions at Raleigh. Her partner straightens up and turns to her. "She wants to meet you," he says.

"Um—okay," Mako says, tucking the helmet underneath her arm so that she can shake the girl's hand. She looks maybe twelve, skinny and bright-eyed, and she is looking up at Mako like she hangs the moon.

"This is Dao-Ming," Raleigh says, in a reasonable approximation of the accent. It is, frankly, annoying how easy it is for him to pick up languages. He'd been coaxing stray bits of Tagalog out of Ocampo ever since the first poker night.

"Hi Dao-Ming," Mako tells her.

The girl nods, staring open-mouthed at her, and Mako tries to think of something to say until the girl opens her mouth and says: "Mori Mako you are the coolest person and you are my hero!"

Then she clamps her mouth shut, turns red, and scoots back behind her grandpa. Mako is pretty sure she's turning just as red. "Ah...thank you very much," she manages, and remembers to smile.

"Here," says grandma, pushing the poster and a pen at her. She takes the poster and smooths it out on the counter so she can sign it. In the photo, Mako and Raleigh are posed in their suits, sans helmets, standing tall against a photoshopped skyline with their jaeger behind them. Raleigh leans over and scrawls his name across his photographic self's chest.

When they're done, they look up to discover grandma pushing a giant paper bag across the counter. "All your favorites," she says, when Mako opens her mouth to ask.

"Thank you," she says, reaching into her suit for her wallet. Grandma makes a rapid motion with her hand. "No money! Not for Mori Mako and Becket Raleigh."

Mako freezes. "Are you sure?"

Grandma shakes her head, grinning widely with slightly crooked teeth. "Take," she commands, pushing the bag forward. "You come back anytime. Always free."

"Thank you," Mako says in Cantonese, and in some instinctual firing of neurons, bows politely, from the waist, like would make her own grandma proud. Grandma, grandpa and the little girl bow back reverently.

"Thanks," Raleigh says, clapping Mako's shoulder and flashing another one of those magazine-cover smiles.

"We are honored!" grandma shouts as they leave, paper bag under Raleigh's arm. Outside there is already a crowd forming, curious faces turning to shock, amazement, delight. "That's them!" she hears.

"Here we go," Raleigh says, and the crowd begins to close around them. It's just like when they first returned to base, only this time there are small children and grandpas and the clicks of cell phone cameras from every direction.

"Thank you, thank you," she says again and again to people who offer her congratulations and thanks and hands and things to sign.

The crowd shifts for a second and she catches the eye of a short man in long maroon robes standing at the edge of the crush. She thinks he stands out because he is scowling, the only one in a sea of smiles and adoration. His eyes are flat and hard on her and Raleigh, and Mako takes a step back automatically. Then the crowd closes around them again and he is lost.

"Can you sign my face?" asks a ten-year-old boy.

They can and do, one pilot on each side of his face. "Yaah! Die, kaiju!" the kid screams, throwing both fists in the air, and Mako grins.

"You hungry yet?" Raleigh leans over to practically shout over the noise of the crowd.

"Yes," she says.

"Let's roll then," Raleigh says, and they start to wade through the crowd to the bike. As soon as people realize what they're doing, a groan of disappoint rolls up from the further reaches of the growing crowd.

"It's okay, we'll be back!" Raleigh says. He kicks the motorcycle stand up. Mako climbs on behind him. He tilts the motorcycle upright and waves. "Best buns in the city!" he shouts, pointing at grandma's little red-canopy shop, and then they speed off.

They thread their way through Hong Kong, the bag of food warm against Mako's front, until they run into the scar of jaeger and kaiju destruction. It's roped off with yellow tape. Beyond is a network of half-fallen buildings, giant chunks of buildings settled deep in cracked asphalt, broken glass glinting in the sunlight. Raleigh hesitates only a moment before steering the bike underneath the flapping caution tape.

Inside the scar it is quieter, the noise from the living streets dulled and punctuated by the crack of glass underneath the wheels. They can't go too far because a big hunk of an office building is sitting right across the street.

Raleigh stops. "Want to eat?" he says.

"Yes." She's starving. They get off the bike and Mako climbs up to sit on top of an overturned bus. Raleigh follows. They sit next to each other, legs dangling off the bus, and eat, passing buns back and forth in silence as the horns honk only a street or two away.

It's maybe an odd place to eat, but she and Raleigh have grown up in the ruins of cities, and the silence feels reverential rather than morbid.

"Have you been dreaming about it?" Raleigh asks.

"Yes," Mako says.

"What are yours like?"

"I dream," she says slowly, frowning, "I dream that I'm too big. Crushing people with every step. I can't put my hand or a foot anywhere without killing people. And every time I try to correct for it, to stop, I tip over and crush more."

"I know that dream," Raleigh says. "There's a standard set that tend to come after fighting in a jaeger. Wait til you get the one where the jaeger goes rogue in the middle of a fight."

Mako chews slowly, her appetite fading at the memory. "How long do they last?"

"I still got 'em every once in a while even when it had been years. They'll probably go away, eventually."

Mako reaches into the bag. There's one package left. She pulls it out. It's the kind stuffed with sweet custard. Mako can tell right away because they are decorated with little raisins on top. Suddenly all the buns in her stomach rise up like they're going to come up again.

They were Stacker's favorite. He had a sweet tooth that he sort of tried to hide because it was a little silly, the last commander of the allied jaeger forces hoarding sugar rations in his cabin for his tea. She always got an extra custard bun for him when they were up late drawing up defense grid plans and she went to get supplies for a late night.

She drops the package like it's radioactive.

"You okay?" she hears Raleigh ask.

"How do you—" She can't get the words out. "When will it—"

Her fingers are digging into her legs through the fabric of her training suit. They start to disappear behind the salty haze fogging her vision.

Raleigh reaches over, hesitantly, and his fingers brush hers. She grabs his hand and squeezes it, hard, as the first tears escape down her face.

"Mako," he says fiercely, and leans over to wrap his arms around her. She holds on to him and cries, silent, shivering and shuddering in the wake of grief.

"When will it go away?" she asks into his shoulder.

He doesn't say anything. She knows the answer. It feels different on this side of adulthood, but she knows it. She knows it from his side, too, felt the gaping hole he walked around with for years afterward, knows he still thinks of Yancy constantly. He knows what it's like to be half a person.

"I want to," she hiccups, "I want to go see him. In the drift. But I'm afraid, Raleigh, I'm so afraid."

"That it'll hurt worse than before?" Raleigh says, his hands tightening around her.

"No-o," she says, and then voices the fear that's lived in her head for the past two weeks. "That—that I won't want to come out."

"You will," Raleigh says. He says it without hesitation. "I did. And you're way stronger than I am."

She pulls back a little, wiping her face with the sleeve of her suit. "How? If you could just stay with your brother forever?"

One side of his mouth curves into that lopsided half-smile. "I had something I wanted to come back to," he says, clear blue eyes open and honest as the sky behind him, and Mako feels a little tiny piece of the fear and grief and shame lodged in her chest break off and tumble away.


	3. Cold Deck

Raleigh hadn't been lying: He really did suck at chess. Mako has to think how to explain what he's doing wrong, because it seems so natural to her.

"You have to anticipate your opponent many moves ahead," she says. "It's like sparring."

"It doesn't feel like that to me," Raleigh says, watching sadly as another of his bishops falls before her army. "Everything is so constrained."

"It is, though. Just like in sparring, you must also read your enemy," Mako explains. "See what he does, what he doesn't. The way you're playing, you telegraph what you're going to do, what kind of moves you like to make."

She hums disapprovingly as he moves a pawn, and removes it expertly with her castle. "See? You play chess like you pilot a jaeger. You worry too much about doing the unexpected thing. Here, there are no unexpected moves. Someone has already played every move there is to play in chess."

Raleigh frowns, looking at the board. "Maybe you just know what I'll probably do because you've spent time inside my head," he suggests.

Mako raises an eyebrow. "Are you challenging my chess skills, Mr. Becket?" she says. "Because I could remind you that you have also been inside my mind. That is not my advantage."

Chagrined, Raleigh makes a terrible move. Mako cleans up with a dangerous glint in her eye. "Another?" she says sweetly, knocking over his king with her queen.

"Maybe we should settle this with a sparring match instead," he suggests.

"Oh, you want me to beat you in two arenas?" Mako says, flashing a grin with a challenge in it that makes Raleigh's heart do a little backflip.

"Ah, I thought I'd find you guys in here," Herc says, poking his head into Raleigh's quarters. "You ready? Car's just about to leave for the ceremony."

Raleigh gets up, stretching his arms above his head. "I'll take you up on that rematch later," he tells Mako.

"Okay," she says, getting up. "You look very good," she tells Herc. He smiles his ghost-smile at her. He does look striking, though gaunt, in his immaculately pressed dark blue dress uniform and gold piping.

"Thank you, Miss Mori," he says. "Likewise."

Here Raleigh also agrees. The sharp military curves suit Mako, and there's something in the combination of uniform and slightly rebellious hair streaks that makes Raleigh...

He cuts his eyes hastily aside.

"They've got a car waiting for us," Herc says. They follow him down the lower loading bay, where Raleigh sees Ocampo and Liu a few hundred feet away, waiting for the buses to take them over to the ceremony site.

Raleigh and Mako both wave as they cross over to the long car waiting for them, and they wave back. Liu's even smiling.

"She looks happy," she says as they climb in.

"Ocampo said her brother's left that cult," Raleigh says.

"That's great news," Mako says. "I am happy for her."

It's kinda embarrassing to pass up all the engineers and techs as though they weren't just as important as he was. The long black car slides past them, out of the loading bay and across the bridge towards Hong Kong proper.

* * *

The car takes them back to where Leatherback fell, the last kaiju to die on land. The skeleton's already been stripped down to bleached white bones and the massive split skull. Some of the ribs are slagged partway down.

She did that. Mako stares as they pull up in the car. On an impulse, she puts her hand on the window, silhouetted against the five-story tall melted ribs. The difference in scale is the weirdest thing about reconciling the memories of being a jaeger.

The memorial is going to be built on top of the kaiju body, because humans can't resist, apparently. She's seen pictures of the plan: a long, graceful wall with the names of the cities destroyed in kaiju attacks dating back from the beginning, and on top of the skull a small-scale model of the first jaeger ever built.

A metal platform has been hastily constructed on top of the skull itself, nestled between the horns, with a podium in front of a giant TV screen framed by long strings of flags. That's where they're heading. The scaffolding reaches far back along the kaiju spine, flapping tents positioned between the massive ribs.

They drive deep into the construction site, past rows and rows of people in uniforms and, further back, civilians, crowd stretching at least as far as she can see until the view's cut off by the damaged buildings. As they climb out of the car and up a long set of scaffolding stairs, Mako recognizes some of the people on the platform: the presidents of the U.S. and India and the Canadian, Japanese and Australian prime ministers at first glance; there are other powerful men and women behind them too, from Peru and Mexico, Chile and Argentina, the Philippines, all of the Pacific rim nations.

An aide leads them to a spot of honor to the left of the podium. She stands next to Raleigh, falling to attention out of habit, hands locked behind her back. Then she half-turns to see the TV focusing in on her, from some camera along a track in front of the platform. Her face is forty feet tall. She blinks in astonishment as she realizes noise is rising from the crowd—a long, swelling wave of sound. Cheers.

Raleigh, always the ham, gives a big wave and after a second she follows suit, smiling tentatively. The crowd hoots and whistles. The sound is incredible.

"Citizens of the world!" rings out over the crowd, and they turn to see the U.N. chair at the podium. Behind him the screen is split between his image and the translation of his words in a dozen different languages.

Mako stands at attention through speech after speech, even as Raleigh begins to fidget beside her.

"We have united against a common enemy and we have defeated him," says the Japanese prime minister.

"They dared attack our people and they paid the price for it," says the Australian prime minister.

"This monument will stand as a testament to the ingenuity of the human race," says the US president.

"Most of all, it will stand for the brave women and men who died defending this world," says the Indian prime minister, and it's her words that really strike Mako with the first surge of emotion. It's powerful, and she waits for the tears, standing with her feet braced apart, but they don't come.

She stares wonderingly out at the seas of people, rows and rows and rows until she can't see any further, and feels the ache of grief and the swell of hope and happiness and pride together at the same time, and for the first time the two co-existing doesn't make her feel like she wants to rip out her heart. It feels bearable. It feels like maybe, someday, it's possible that everything will be okay again.

Her eyes wander across the faces in front of her, joy and jubilation and hope, boredom, dreams—and hatred.

Mako's gaze stutters to a stop at the man next to Engineer Liu, perhaps twenty rows back in the audience. He is standing at attention, same as Liu, but where her eyes are bright and hopeful, his are burning pits of hatred.

Now that she's noticed it, he stands out like a beacon in the crowd full of excitement. Like the man in the maroon robes in front of grandma's bun shop.

Mako's stomach shifts, and her mind takes a minute to catch up with it until she sees something stuck in his ears, like—cotton—?

"Raleigh," she begins to murmur, and his head turns towards her a fraction.

And then the first bomb blows.

* * *

Raleigh's blown off his feet and he goes tumbling backwards. In the back of his mind he thinks two things: 1) The back of the scaffold isn't far away, and 2) _Mako._

He grabs out as he falls, one hand bashing against something hard and the other grasping empty air. The wind's knocked out of him as he hits the ground, bounces, hits something hard and stops.

There's dust in his eyes, in his mouth, in his ears. He's only stunned for a moment before he struggles up, spitting out dust. "Mako!"

To his left he feels something stir in the dust, but there's no noise, nothing, just a soundless ringing. _Shit. Shit._ He can't hear anything. The blast's screwed with his hearing.

Then a hand comes out of the dust and lands on his arm. It's Mako, her face blackened with soot. He grabs her hand and holds on, mouthing a prayer of relief.

The smoke thins a little bit and he can see frantic movements all around him. Aides are scrambling to his left, swarming around the presidents and prime ministers, who are all being heaved to their feet. Someone stays down, he can't see who it is.

He looks right. Herc's a few feet away. There's something—a chunk of the scaffolding came down across him. Raleigh tries to get to his feet.

Pain rips up his back and he falls back, hissing. Mako crouches close to him.

"Are you okay?" he can make out her mouthed words. He wants to know if she's okay. Her bottom lip is bloody, and as she moves, he sees the back of her hair is matted with something dark. His heart's beating way too fast. He points at her head.

Mako puts a hand to the back of her head and winces.

"It's not bad," she says, and she looks clear and alert enough and her pupils are the same size, but it doesn't stop Raleigh's panic from mounting. She peers behind him, her face tight and panicked, and cranes her neck to get a better look at the back of his shoulders, but he grabs her arm.

"Herc," he mouths, and points. No one seems to have noticed them or Herc; the aides are all clustered around the heads of state.

"Can you get up?" she mouths. He nods, and she crouches down next to him and slings his arm across her shoulders as though he was drunk again.

When they rises, he feels her jerk and hiss in. "What is it?" he says frantically, tightening his grip on her shoulder. Mako puts her hand to her ribs, grimaces, but mouths, "It's fine."

Raleigh's heart sinks as they get closer to Herc. It doesn't look good. Herc is on his back, and a long chunk of metal rebar—with a string of flags still attached to one end—is lying low across his torso. He's not moving.

"Herc!" Raleigh says, as Mako sets him gently down on one side and rushes to Herc's other side. "Marshal Hansen!"

Mako checks his pulse with efficient, trembling hands, and pats his cheek. Herc's eyes stay closed. There's a bright streak of blood at his ear. Mako turns to him, shaking her head. It's clear to Raleigh, too; Herc shouldn't be moved, not by anyone who isn't a paramedic.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees people in uniforms charging across the twisted, angled platform. Military officers, paramedics. He closes his eyes in relief.

"Hey!" he yells, though he can't hear his own voice, figuring it can't hurt. "We need help! We're over here! Marshal Hansen and Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket!"

A figure stops, breaks off and heads towards them. Thank God.

Then the second bomb goes off.

He can't so much hear it as feel it, the metal scaffolding jerking and wrenching beneath their feet. He's knocked off his feet again, and he sees Mako catch herself as she falls sideways. _Shit_, Raleigh thinks, _we're still under attack—_

All of the uniformed paramedics have disappeared in a wave of fresh smoke. The platform jerks again and tips a few degrees. Mako and Raleigh's eyes meet: the scaffolding isn't stable.

Someone rushes toward them in the dust. Raleigh, eyes watering, sees a youngish woman in a sharp, crisp uniform he doesn't recognize.

"Let's go!" he can make out what's she's shouting. She grabs Raleigh by the arm, gesturing, and helps him to his feet. She points down at the metal below them, clearly indicating what they already guessed—the platform is about to fall.

Mako, who's crawled back over to Herc, looks up desperately. "We can't leave him," she mouths.

Raleigh looks at the aide, points at Herc. She shakes her head and gestures again at the shuddering platform.

Mako shakes her head fiercely and beckons Raleigh over. She's right. They can't leave Herc. The world's already claimed too much of that family. Raleigh shakes off the woman's arm and goes over to help Mako heave at the heavy metal bar pinning Herc to the floor.

The woman hesitates, then joins them. Together they pull the metal rebar off Herc, who doesn't move. Mako kneels next to the unconscious man and Raleigh takes the other side. They pull Herc's body up between them.

"This way," the woman gestures, and they follow her towards the back of the platform. It isn't the stairs they came up; it's another set, leading back towards the kaiju's ribcage, away from the crowd. Raleigh supposes that's wise. If another bomb went off, it would probably target the crowd for maximum damage.

Faint screams begin to filter through the silence in his ears as they struggle to keep Herc mostly upright as they climb down the staircase. Raleigh shakes his head. His hearing's beginning to come back.

The back portion of the memorial construction has stayed remarkably intact. The tent poles are still upright, dust-blackened fabric flapping in the breeze. Mako and Raleigh follow the aide down the staircase, which leads down to a walkway formed out of the kaiju spine.

"Are you okay?" Raleigh tries shouting, and Mako's eyes widen. She must be able to hear him. "I'm okay," she yells back, and the sound of her voice, hoarse and ragged, is music to him. "You?"

"I'll be fine," he says. "Worried about Herc."

Mako glances down at Herc. The front of his blue uniform is soaked in blood. They both know it doesn't look good and all this moving isn't helping.

"Hey!" Raleigh shouts at the aide. "Do you speak English? How much further? Herc needs help!"

The woman turns partway. "Just a little further," she says.

Behind them there is a great shuddering crash, and they both turn their heads to see the platform collapse in a heap. A gust of wind kicks up and blows past their faces, dust and metal and blood.

The kaiju skull is untouched. It's like it's still winning, even though it's dead and the breach is closed.

"Who would do this?" Raleigh says, sickened. "The war's over!"

Mako frowns. "Before the first bomb," she says, her voice cracking, "I saw someone in the crowd. A man. Next to Liu."

Raleigh swears. The aide glances back at him as she holds a flap open for them. They drag Herc through. "Shit," he says. "Do you think it was the ju-heads?"

"We do not care for that term."

Raleigh jerks his head up.

They've entered the big tent nestled inside the kaiju ribcage. Inside are a dozen men and women in long, familiar maroon robes, arms clasped serenely in front of them, untouched by the dust and debris of the bomb. The Church of the Breach-borne Angels.

_Shit._

* * *

Finally, some action *g*


	4. Ace in the Hole

He can't run, can't do anything, or he'd have to drop the injured Herc to the floor. Mako can't either.

"Please step forward," says a man at the center of the half-circle. He looks familiar; Raleigh thinks maybe he's seen him giving interviews on TV.

"Let us go," Raleigh tries. "Our friend is injured. He needs help."

"I understand," the man says calmly. "Set him down and step forward with your hands on your heads."

Raleigh scours his mind for something to do. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the woman aide step forward and raise a gun, her dark eyes calm and composed as the rest of the ju-heads. "Don't do this," he says.

"Please do as the High Prophet says," the woman says.

"What are you going to do with him?" Raleigh says.

"It is not he whose sins are greatest here," she says, and Raleigh's stomach clenches as he parses her words.

He and Mako kneel slowly to let Herc down as gently as possible. Herc doesn't stir, his head lolling to the side as they lay him out on the hard knobbly surface of the kaiju spine. A few of the ju-heads move closer to them.

Mako and Raleigh look at each other and he sees the same idea in his head written on her carefully blank face.

As they rise, Raleigh shoots out a foot and knocks the gun out of the woman's hand. It falls and she stumbles back, surprised. She isn't a trained soldier—he could tell that. On the other side, Mako's done the same with a hoarse battle yell.

They fight back to back, as seamlessly as they fought each other in the sparring room, protecting Herc in their midst. Raleigh sends the woman aide flying back with a kick to the midsection. Two more robes, men, rush in, and he dodges a grab from the first, decks him with his left fist. The wound on his back stings as he twists.

The second ju-head has a dagger, a long ceremonial-looking knife. He doesn't look like he knows how to use it, but Raleigh's been in enough fights to know he still has to be careful.

The ju-head swipes at him. "Surrender, sinner," he hisses. His face is young, a long forehead and thinning blond hair.

"Don't think so," Raleigh says. He waits for the kid to come in, peripherally aware of a solid thunk as one of Mako's punches connects.

When the kid rushes towards him Raleigh twists and brings his foot up to deliver a solid blow to the ju-head's wrist. As he'd expected, the knife drops, too close to Herc's body. He needs to move this fight away from Herc.

"Come and get me," he says to the kid, stepping away from Herc. The kid glares and comes in hot-headed. Raleigh drops him with a bone-jarring uppercut and a stomp to the ribs once he's down. This isn't a fair fight and he's not going to pretend like it is.

He chances a glance over his shoulder. Mako's got two bodies in maroon robes crumpled next to her. That's four down. These guys aren't trained fighters. He starts to hope they can get out of here.

And then the world turns fuzzy and all his limbs lock up. "Fuck!" he yells, or thinks he yells, but he's not really sure—he can't move and all his nerves are screaming—

It stops and he falls, loose-limbed, can't help it. He hits the ground face-first and his nose smashes into hard kaiju bone with an explosion of pain.

"—leigh! Raleigh!" Mako is yelling, and he's vaguely aware of someone touching him, pulling his hands behind his back. Cool metal cuts into his wrists.

They heave him up to his knees and he blinks, feeling blood from his nose dripping down his face. The woman aide steps in front of him. She's holding a taser.

"Stop fighting," orders the High Prophet. "Your partner's incapacitated. We do not wish to have to cause him more pain."

He twists his head and sees Mako, her jaw trembling with fury, step back and drop her fists. Two of the remaining ju-heads approach her—gingerly—and pull her hands in front to lock them into handcuffs.

"I'm sorry," Raleigh tells her.

She looks over at him, her chin high and her eyes hard, the collar of her uniform spattered with blood, and he loves her, God help him, he loves her so fucking much that it rises in his chest and for a moment he's choked with fear and adrenaline and love.

"The sinners must kneel," says the High Prophet, and the robes drag her over to him and shove her to her knees next to him. The backs of his toes touch Herc's motionless body.

"We are not the sinners," Mako says, her voice tight with anger.

The prophet stops in front of them and considers them. "My brothers and sisters," he says. He's short, the High Prophet, his features plain and thin and unremarkable, but his voice is round and compelling. "Join me."

The robes step up with him, the woman with her taser still held loosely in one hand. Raleigh tastes iron and sick despair.

"My brothers and sisters, four weeks ago, we sat together and shared our anguish as we watched our saviors slain and their path destroyed. We mourned together. And together we have worked to earn our Lord's forgiveness for this world."

Raleigh sidles closer to Mako. She's not looking at him, her eyes locked on the Prophet as he speaks.

"We are the only ones to heed his call," the Prophet is saying. "When we sacrifice the ones who committed the ultimate atrocity, we shall convince God that we are worthy of forgiveness. He is powerful, he is merciful," and they all dip their heads and murmur the same phrase back. _He is powerful, he is merciful._

"You think killing us is gonna bring the kaiju back?" Raleigh says roughly, wanting to interrupt, wanting to tear open the smooth, gentle, bloodless spell the man is weaving with his voice and expose how ugly it is. "You're even crazier than they say on TV! The breach is goddamn closed. The damage is done."

The man behind the Prophet hands him a long silver dagger with blue symbols like the ones on kaiju hide.

"Forgive them, as you forgive us all, for they do not know what they do," and the Prophet reaches forward to lay a hand on Mako's hair. She jerks away, disgusted, and Raleigh yells, "Don't you fucking touch her!"

"Sssh," says the woman, so gently that Raleigh can barely fucking stand it. "Do not worry. Your blood upon the sacred kaiju bone will appease the angry Lord. The Prophet will cleanse your sins and your journey can end peacefully, knowing you have sacrificed to save us all."

"Peacefully my ass!" Raleigh says furiously.

"He is the one who pushed the button," the man behind the Prophet says to him. "His blood will call to the Lord."

"Yes," the Prophet murmurs, and raises his hand. The ju-head next to Raleigh tangles his fingers in Raleigh's hair and pushes him down to the floor. He goes. He can't put up any resistance; his hands are still cuffed behind his back. Blood drips off his chin and splats on the white bone.

"No!" Mako shouts.

The Prophet kneels beside Raleigh, puts his hand on Raleigh's face. Raleigh snarls, trying to jerk his head away, but the hand is still in his hair, keeping him down. "Be not afraid, brother," the Prophet says. "I am about to cleanse your sins. Join me, brothers and sisters, in the first prayer."

A hum of voices leaps up around them, the robes pressing closer. They raise their voices in unison. A cool metal edge touches the skin on the back of his neck.

"Mako," Raleigh says, his voice tight. He can barely get the words out. He wants to look at her. He has so many regrets. "Mako, I—"

"_Stay down!_" Mako snarls in Japanese.

Raleigh blinks. In that second she moves faster than he's ever seen her. There's a long flash of silver in her hands.

Above him, there's a shocked, gurgling sound. He stays frozen, because she told him to, and a feminine voice breaks the air with a high-pitched scream.

Mako leaps to her feet and the hand in Raleigh's hair holding him down vanishes. He rolls over onto his back—_ouch_—and Mako kicks the man behind him backwards and leaps after him. The knife comes down in a deadly arc. He recognizes it—the long silver one the blond kid dropped earlier next to Herc.

Raleigh pushes himself up with one elbow, frantic to get up. He's got his eyes on the woman, the one with the taser. As she starts forward, towards Mako, he gathers his legs underneath him and lunges forward, slamming his bulk into her legs. She goes down and he scrambles over her, looking for the taser. He has to turn around to pick it up with his hands still tied behind his back.

That ends now. With the taser clutched in one hand, he scoots himself over his hands so that they're still bound, but in front. He's less flexible now than he was when he first tried this trick, but it works. Now for business.

He finds the button on the taser handle and thumbs it, sending a long jolt of electricity into the woman. She's already down, but he's not taking any chances.

He looks around. Two of the ju-heads are gathered around the fallen body of the Prophet. Blood is leaking down the front of his chest, mostly hidden in folds of maroon robes. Three are going after Mako, who's wielding the knife in front of her with both handcuffed hands. Another is headed for him.

He aims the taser. The guy goes down without a sound, his limbs frozen. Raleigh holds it down. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten seconds.

When he stops, the guy falls down and doesn't get up. Raleigh leaps to his feet, tases the two holding the Prophet—it takes agonizingly long, each ten seconds an eternity when he can hear Mako grunting as she holds off the fanatics with her knife, but he doesn't want any surprises. Finally the second one falls, and he charges after the men chasing Mako.

She's cut one of them down when he gets there. "Hey!" he shouts, and both remaining ju-heads turn to look at him. Raleigh tases the shit out of the nearest one.

Mako makes quick work of the other one who's turned his back on her, swiping his legs out from under him and smashing an elbow into his face.

They stand there, staring at each other and panting, fallen bodies all around them. Mako drops the knife and it clatters to the bone.

"Mako," he gasps, and suddenly he can't stand to be so far apart from her. He takes three, four long strides and they crash together. Raleigh can't touch her enough; he curses the handcuffs. He opens his arms and drops them over her head, still bound, and she presses her hands and her head against his chest.

"Oh God, Mako," he says again, his voice shaking.

"Itai," she squeaks, and he loosens his grip on her instantly. "Oh—sorry—are you okay? Are you—"

She turns her face up to him with a tiny, wry, bloody grin. "You were squeezing me too hard," she says hoarsely, and he makes a noise that's half an incredulous laugh and half a gasp, burying the side of his face in her neck.

"God, I thought that was it," he says. "I thought—but you, you were amazing—"

She sighs, and he feels some of the adrenaline drain out of her. Her hands fist in the front of his uniform. He wants to pick her up and carry her home.

"Are you okay? Your nose," Mako says.

"Probably broken," Raleigh says. "S'okay, it's happened before."

"We should check on Herc," she says into his shoulder.

"Yeah," he agrees, but neither of them move for a long, long moment.

When they untangle from each other to check on Herc, Raleigh sees the High Prophet crumpled next to the marshall. Blood is pooling around him. Raleigh fights back a surge of hatred for what the man has done, what he's inspired others to do; they can hear sirens and people screaming faintly from outside.

Herc's still unconscious. His color doesn't look great, but he still has a pulse, and his chest is still slowly rising and falling.

"Stay with him," Mako says, "I'll go get help."

He nods, keeping his fingers on Herc's wrist as he watches her limp out of the tent to the sweet sunshine and swirling chaos outside, and tries to calm the part of him that surges up in fear as she disappears.

* * *

The media storm that follows is insane. This time they're sheltered from most of it, tucked away in the hospital knitting Mako's cracked ribs and Raleigh's gashes and broken nose. They convince the doctors to put them in the same room. Mako is glad for this; she has a new set of dreams in which she watches the High Prophet bleed Raleigh dry onto the cold hard kaiju bone while she struggles helplessly alongside, and it helps to wake up and see him snoring softly with his mouth slightly open in the next bed.

They spend a lot of time at Herc's bedside, too. He lives, though they had to put about eight pints of blood back in him, and he hasn't woken up yet but the doctors think he'll be okay.

Just once, they turn on the TV long enough to catch up on the aftermath. The bombs hadn't been big enough to kill many people in the crowd, but it had hit the world leaders on the platform harder. Even then, only the Canadian prime minister had been killed; the others were wounded but alive. The death toll stands at 37, a small number alongside the thousands lost to kaiju attacks, but the sorrow is burnt larger by the shock of celebration turned tragedy in an instant. When they see the footage of themselves in the wreckage, in soot-blackened uniforms and bloodied, stricken faces, they turn off the TV and by mutual, silent agreement, do not turn it on again.

Tendo brings them siu mai and pato à cabidela, a deck of cards, and a chessboard. They play a lot of chess. Raleigh gets a little better (a little). He teaches her a game called hand and foot. He's a good teacher, patient and methodical, and she likes to listen to the low, comforting rumble of his voice as he talks about the trouble he got into after Yancy taught him to cheat at cards.

A few of the techs visit, led by Ocampo. His face splits into a grin when he sees them. "You look like shit, my friend," he tells Raleigh, which is true, although the once-spectacular bruising from his broken nose is starting to fade, and bumps his fist against Mako's. "Heard you saved the day," he says.

"Ah—it was nothing," she stammers, because she still hasn't learned to take praise yet. Then she thinks better of it. "Thank you."

"My little girls want to meet you," he says. "Can I bring them by next time?"

"Sure," Mako says, and she smiles. "I would love that."

They stay and chat with the techs, but Ocampo stays late after the others leave. "Hey Ocampo, where's Liu?" Raleigh asks after a while.

Mako's eyes snap to Ocampo's. Raleigh looks between them, confused.

Ocampo pauses, looking uncharacteristically hesitant, and clears his throat. "So, Liu," he says. "You remember her brother, the uh, ju-head. He was at the ceremony."

Raleigh's lips part. "Oh," he says slowly. "But he wasn't one of the ones who—"

"No," Ocampo says heavily, "because Liu killed him."

She can see the shock in Raleigh's face, layered with disbelief. "She killed her brother?" he repeats, and Mako knows there is no way for him to understand the act.

"He helped plan the attack," she says quietly. "I saw him. Before the bomb blew. He knew it was going to happen; he had earplugs in."

Ocampo nods grimly. "I think he was going after you, to join the others. But Liu realized what was happening, and she..." He trails off.

Mako swallows. "Is she okay?"

"It wrecked her," he says. "Like it would anyone. But Liu's strong. I think she'll be okay. You know. Someday."

Raleigh's silent for a long time after Ocampo leaves. Mako slides out of bed and sits on the side of his bed, reaching hesitantly over to brush her fingers against his. He opens his hand to interlace their fingers.

"I can't..." he says, and he can't finish the sentence, but Mako knows. His brother is still a gaping wound, only half-healed, and she's not sure how much it ever will. "I know," she says, and he tightens his grip on her hand.

* * *

Ocampo, bless him, brings over Raleigh's motorcycle the day they are discharged. "You wanna drive?" Raleigh says, tossing the keys to Mako.

Her eyes light up and an only slightly wicked grin curves her mouth. Raleigh's getting used to his heart turning over like that, though, so he barely even gulps.

"Do you want to go straight back to the Shatterdome?" she asks.

"Not really," Raleigh says.

He climbs on behind her and slides his arms around her waist. She revs the bike and they speed out of the hospital bay onto the streets.

Mako takes them past the turnoff to the Shatterdome, out of the city towards the ocean, and Raleigh feels his heart and mind and lungs expand as the wave of fresh salty air hits them. She wends the bike along curving roads, leaving the city further and further behind, up and up, dune grass blowing alongside the roads as they pass.

On the last curve they come around to see a deep blue bay spread out before them, ringed with green grass and a thin stripe of white sand.

Mako slows the bike at the top of the mountain, and they get off, shucking the helmets, and walk to the edge. There's a low rock ledge and they sit down next to each other and look out over the bay. The water is lovely, clear and blue, nothing more evil than sea urchins hidden in its depths.

Peace, it feels peaceful, and for the first time since the breach closed Raleigh feels it, really _believes_ it: they are at peace from the war they've been fighting for twelve years. Peace. He's not stupid, he doesn't know if it'll last, and they'll never be free from the uncertainty, but damn does it feel good to have kicked the goddamn monsters out of their world, for however long it lasts. And people, people they can deal with. The kaiju hadn't beaten them and neither had the ju-heads.

At his side, Mako clears her throat. The wind blows her black and blue bangs back from her face, long eyelashes framing her lovely dark eyes. She looks as beautiful as the ocean.

"Raleigh," she says. "You said, before we left for the breach..." Her fingers twist in the fabric of her pockets, and Raleigh's heartbeat starts to speed up. "You said that you were thinking about the future, and then, in the Drift..."

He waits.

She takes a deep breath. "Do you still want to—because I—"

"I thought you'd never ask," Raleigh says, and he leans over to tip his head against her forehead, taking in the look of surprise, then delight, then fear, then determination as she moves forward to kiss him. He smiles against her mouth and she deepens it into a sweet, open-mouthed kiss, lingering and warm, poignant and bright with the future.

"Mako," he sighs into her neck when they stop, feeling her hands tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.

He folds her in his arms, careful of her healing ribs, and drinks in the feeling of just holding her. His heart beats with the promise of the kiss. She hums softly, and he can feel the vibration in his chest.

"Raleigh," she says curiously. "If you wanted...why didn't you say anything before?"

"I wanted to wait for you to make up your mind," Raleigh says.

"Oh," she says, is quiet for a long moment. Then she says, "You mean we could have been doing this earlier?"

He grins against her collarbone. "Mako," he says, "we got all the time in the world," and lifts his head for another kiss.

* * *

**A/N: **Well that's it folks! Hope you enjoyed :) Because the bunny bit, I have, uh, another one in the works. This one is an AU, which is more my normal speed, and I'm gonna turn the apocalypse dial up to 11, because there wasn't enough apocalypse already? Anyway, I'm really excited about writing it!


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